It is increasingly common that consumers seek service from business concerns using the telephone. For example, a consumer seeking to place an order, schedule a delivery, file a complaint, or query an account balance may place a call to a centralized number provided by a business concern. It is well known that businesses often provide such numbers as so-called toll-free “800” numbers or the like.
Such toll free sites may be staffed by a series of agents who have been trained in customer service. While most agents will have generalized training and knowledge in dealing with customers, they typically have different levels of experience and training with regards to particular skill sets. For example, certain agents will have extensive experience with one type of product or transaction, while other agents will have experience with different products or transactions. Thus, agents may have different skill sets. Two agents may have familiarity with a given product or transaction, but may have a different level of skill for the given item. Thus, agents may have different skill levels for a given skill set.
Additionally, certain agents may have specialized skill sets not readily adapted to training, but still very important to certain customers. For example, some agents may have fluency in certain languages, such as Spanish or French.
Some toll free sites are so-called “virtual call centers,” whereby calls are routed to agents at call centers at different geographic locations. One problem with this approach involves the employment of properly qualified agents. Moreover, it is often very time consuming to screen a large number of potential agents in search of the appropriate qualifications, including knowledge of various technical information as well as fluency in predetermined languages.
Today, such screening is often performed manually using live employment specialists or via web-based questionnaires, etc. Unfortunately, the use of live employment specialists for such screening is cumbersome and expensive. Moreover, web-based questionnaires are unable to screen for fluency in various languages, etc.
Of course, the foregoing problems stem from not only virtual call center employment programs, but also in various other information gathering contexts (i.e. a test, a survey, an interview, a resume, etc.).